Extremists who were targeted by FBI cheer Trump Maga pick to head agency

The Guardian

07-02-2025

Some extremists who were recently the targets of the FBI are applauding Donald Trump's appointment of Maga loyalist Kash Patel as its new director, which experts are warning is a sign of an emboldened far right now seen as a diminishing existential threat inside the nation's top law enforcement agency.
In what was a fraught and contentious Senate confirmation hearing last week, Patel, Trump's pick to head the FBI, made a point to describe some of the racism he has faced in the US as the son of Indian Gujarati immigrants.
'You should go back to where you came from,' he described being said to him, after putting on the record another vile, six-word epithet he was labeled with. 'You belong with your terrorist home friends.'
'That's what was sent to me,' he said.
Patel is known for peddling various conspiracy theories on podcasts popular among Maga followers, and he is a polarizing figure. He's not expected to garner any Democratic votes on the way to a likely confirmation as the new head of the FBI.
But Patel is garnering some unlikely fans among the racist and xenophobic far right.
'I like Kash fr, he is based af,' wrote one Telegram user on a post about Patel from a neo-Nazi account with thousands of followers. 'I'd buy him curry anytime.'
According to another far-right news account, Patel was expected to 'blow the fuck out' former attorney generals Jeff Sessions and Bill Bar, along with former FBI director Christopher Wray – the last person to hold the job destined for Patel.
Trump and the rest of his administration have broadly promised 'retribution' against government workers who participated in what they see as enemy activities: the so-called 'Russiagate' investigation, the various inquiries connected to the January 6 attacks on Capitol Hill and any Department of Justice litigation against Trump in the last four years.
Already, FBI agents have not been spared.
While Patel has previously called for 'major, major reform' of the FBI, since Trump took office in January, at least nine high-ranking bureau officials have been reportedly forced out. That led to James Dennehy, the assistant director at the FBI's New York field office, sending a staff-wide email declaring the bureau was at figurative war with the Trump administration.
'Today, we find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own, as good people are being walked out of the FBI and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and FBI policy,' wrote Dennehy.
Among some of the recent targets of those types of FBI counter-terrorism operations against the far right, Patel and Trump are getting nothing but applause.
'If Kash Patel actually ends the FBI spying programs and using agents/informants to subvert political movements through gayops,' wrote an online neo-Nazi publication run by former leaders of the now defunct Atomwaffen Division, a designated international terrorist organization in multiple countries.
'Just fine for us,' continued the Telegram post. 'Might not happen but it'd be nice if it did.'
In another recent post, the same publication hailed the potential for mass firings and hearing about complaining FBI agents.
'They're also bitching that they're not getting the buyout offers like everyone else is,' they posted, referring to the broader buyouts to federal worker being offered by the Trump administration. 'DEl can't protect them from getting fired for being too retarded anymore.'
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Atomwaffen members, some of whom have been federally charged in the US with murder, harassing journalists and a bomb plot (among other crimes), have long complained that they were the victims of misunderstood 'entrapment'. By 2020, an FBI investigation largely dismantled the group's entire stateside operation.
'If Patel is confirmed to head the FBI, I think we can expect to see the agency abandon any serious efforts to confront far-right extremist groups,' said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.
'Patel has been interviewed on QAnon and other extremist broadcasts and seems much more interested in purging FBI officials and going after his and Trump's enemies than countering terrorist groups.'
Beirich, who has studied far-right extremism for decades, added that in her estimations: 'The public should be concerned about emboldened white supremacists and possible terrorism coming from these far-right movements who may be getting a pass from Patel's FBI.'
One of Trump's first acts as president in his second administration was to issue unconditional pardons to 1,500 January 6 attackers, in a move widely celebrated among the hardcore extremist right.
But others have continued to see Patel and Trump as potential antagonists in the remaining four years of the presidency.
'White supremacist extremists will likely continue to see the FBI as a threat to their organizing and as a convenient opponent in propaganda,' said Joshua Fisher Birch, a terrorism analyst at the non-profit Counter Extremism Project.
'These same extremists are also cheering the firing of FBI agents and are hoping that the agency is weakened going forward.'
Christopher Pohlhaus, the leader of the Blood Tribe neo-Nazi group, cheekily congratulated the pardon of Riley June Williams, one of the Trump pardonees for actions on January 6.
She was previously linked to his group, which he downplayed, until now.
'Saint Riley … Congrats on your freedom,' he wrote, under a photo of Williams in a skull mask. 'Hail victory.'